First, draw a starting pattern by clicking on the cells to toggle them. Press the right arrow key to advance the simulation by one generation. You can still draw and edit the cells between generations. Press the up arrow key to rapidly advance through generations. Because the simulation runs very quickly, newly drawn cells may immediately die if they don't have enough neighbors. You can still draw near existing still lifes to modify them. You don't tell the cells what to do! You only choose where the cells start. After that, the rules decide what happens. Definitions Draw — Click cells to turn them on or off and make your own starting pattern. Cell — One square in the grid. Toggle — To turn something on if it is off, or turn it off if it is on. Live cell — A cell that is on. Dead cell — A cell that is off. Neighbor — One of the 8 cells directly surrounding a cell. Neighbors — The up to 8 cells around a cell that are used to decide what happens to it. Generation — One step in the simulation, where every cell gets updated. Next generation — What all the cells look like after they have been updated. Still life — A group of live cells that stays exactly the same when the next generation happens. Pattern — A group of cells that you make by turning cells on and off. Starting pattern — The pattern you draw before you start the simulation. Underpopulation — When a live cell has too few neighbors and dies. Overpopulation — When a live cell has too many neighbors and dies. Evolve — When the cells change from one generation to the next. Simulation — The game running the rules and making the cells evolve. Alive — Another word for a live cell. Dead — Another word for a cell that is off.
Based on Conway's Game of Life, created by John Conway. ChatGPT helped me with some of the grid calculations. Rules for the cells: If a cell is alive: If it has fewer than 2 neighbors, it dies of underpopulation. If it has 2 or 3 neighbors, it stays alive. If it has more than 3 neighbors, it dies of overpopulation. If a cell is dead: If it has exactly 3 neighbors, it becomes alive. If it does not have exactly 3 neighbors, it stays dead.
